“Be careful!” Marcus called from somewhere near me. “There’s glass everywhere.”
It was hard to tell one demolished house from another and when we reached the final pile of rubble, panic gripped me. “I’m turned around!” I said, searching the strange, unrecognizable beach for something familiar. The explosion of boards and glass and metal in front of me simply couldn’t be The Sea Tender.
“Maggie!” Marcus called into the massive pile of debris as he circled it. “Andy!”
I stood frozen, my hands covering my face, afraid of seeing a lifeless arm or leg poking from the rubble. I peeked between my fingers to the deceptively calm ocean, littered with the remains of the cottages, and my eyes were suddenly drawn to the splashes of peach and purple above the horizon.
“Marcus, look!” I pointed toward the sunrise.
“Where?” He straightened up from the ruins. “What are you looking at?”
“There!” I kicked off my sodden shoes and started to run into the chilly water.
“Laurel, don’t go out there!” He caught up to me, grabbing my arm. Then he saw what I’d seen. On a floating piece of debris, far in the distance, were two tiny silhouettes.
My children.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Maggie
AT FIRST I THOUGHT WE COULD SWIM, BUT AS WE psyched ourselves up to jump from the floating wreckage, I caught Andy around his waist.
“We’re too far, Andy,” I said. The current was pulling us away from the beach more quickly than I’d realized, sucking us toward a blinding orange sun. The beach, lit up like pink gold, looked very far away. “We won’t make it.”
We lost our balance for the fourth or fifth time, dropping to our knees. I stared again at the beach. What choice did we have but to swim?
I had to think. I wasn’t sure what part of the house we were kneeling on. It had been a bigger surface at first, but it had morphed into a Huck Finn–type raft, with a chunk of built-in bookshelf jutting up from one side of it. The floor of the living room, maybe. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it kept breaking apart, leaving us with a smaller and smaller barrier between life and death. It wouldn’t float forever.
“We can swim,” Andy said. “We can pretend it’s laps.”
“But it’s not,” I said. “It’s much colder than the pool, and a pool doesn’t have a riptide. See how we’re being pulled out to sea? That’s what would happen to us if we tried to swim.”
I was so scared. What if instead of saving my baby brother, I was killing him?
Another piece of our creaky raft broke away and Andy yelped as I pulled him tight against me. I watched the part of the flooring with the bookcase float away from us, then buckle and slip underwater. I was watching our fate.
“Are we going to drown?” Andy asked.
The pink beach seemed farther away than only a few seconds earlier. I grabbed Andy’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes.
“Listen to me,” I said. “We’ll have to try to swim, but we have to stay together as much as we can. Don’t lose sight of me and I won’t lose sight of you. And listen! We can’t swim straight toward the beach! Okay? Swim parallel to the beach.”
“What’s ‘parell’?” He looked scared. He was picking up my own fear.
I let out a sob, surprising both of us. I brushed tears away with the back of my hand. “It means we’ll swim in this direction.” I pointed north.
“How will we get to the beach then?” His voice was so tiny.
What have I done? “Panda.” I hugged him quickly. “I promise. We swim in that direction for a little bit and then we’ll be able to swim to the beach. But you have to stay calm. Don’t panic.”
“You’re not calm.” His lower lip trembled.
“You know how you’re supposed to pace yourself during a race?” I asked.
He nodded, even though I’d never once seen him pace himself.
“You’ve got to pace yourself this time, Andy.” My voice cracked. “Please, Panda. Don’t swim all-out, okay? Slow and steady, in that direction—” I pointed again “—and we can do it.”
Andy’s gaze had drifted from my face, and I suddenly saw the whole of the sun reflected in his brown eyes.
“Look!” He pointed behind me.
I turned in time to see a wall of water headed for us, rising out of a sea that was totally calm. I clutched Andy’s arm, letting out a scream as the wave bore down on us. It tore us from our flimsy deck and ripped my brother from my hands.
I tumbled underwater like a gymnast through the air. I held my breath, my eyes open, searching the frothy, swirling water for Andy as the wave turned me in corkscrews. I couldn’t see him. Panicking, I batted at the water as if I could clear it away from my face like a curtain.
“Andy!” I shouted into the ocean, water filling my mouth, my lungs.
I rose in slow motion to the crest of the wave. It felt like someone was lifting me up, carrying me. My lungs hurt as they sucked in the amazing pink air, and when I plummeted into the water again, I gave in. Gave up. Gave myself over to the sea.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Laurel
“I CAN’T SEE THEM ANYMORE!” I SHOUTED TO Marcus. I couldn’t see him, either, but I knew he was searching the yards of the front row of houses for a boat or raft.
“What?” He appeared suddenly, running toward the water with a surfboard.
I pointed toward where we’d last seen Maggie and Andy. “They’ve disappeared!”
He stopped running to look toward the horizon.
“I don’t know what happened!” I said. “I blinked and they were gone.”
He headed for the water again, dropping the surfboard on the surface and starting to paddle.
“Let me go, too!”
“Stay here and keep trying the phone!” he shouted.
We’d been trying to get a signal with both of our phones ever since we got there. I lifted my phone to punch in 9-1-1 again with my cold, shaking fingers, but something caught my eye on the beach a good distance north of where I stood. People? A small figure, pink lit in the shallow water, nearly to the inlet. It couldn’t possibly be one of my children. There was no way either of them could have swum to shore that quickly under the best of circumstances.
But whoever it was had dark hair and was very slight.
“Marcus, come back!” I shouted as I started running. The wet sand was like concrete beneath my bare feet. I tried to make sense of the tiny image on the beach. What was he or she doing? Not standing, that much was clear, and I ran faster. The sandpipers and gulls dashed out of my way. I’d never run so fast in all my life.
“Be careful, Laurel!” Marcus shouted from behind me. I heard his own thudding footsteps on the sand. I knew he was warning me about the debris scattered along the beach in front of me, but I wasn’t going to slow down for shards of glass or rusty nails. I knew he wouldn’t either.
Andy was getting to his feet in the wet sand, gentle waves lapping at his legs.
“Andy!” I waved my arms. He was alive! “Andy!”
He tugged at something in the water and it wasn’t until I was nearly on him that I realized it was Maggie.
“Oh my God!” I ran into the chilly knee-high water, splashing it behind me.
“Mommy!” Andy lost his footing and sat down again. When I reached him, Maggie’s head was in his lap.
“Maggie!” I dropped to my knees next to my children.
Andy was wheezing, his breath whistling above the soft murmur of the waves and his chest expanding and contracting like an accordion.
“Baby!” I grabbed his neck and kissed his forehead, but quickly turned my attention to Maggie.
“Is she all right?” Marcus dropped to the water next to us as Maggie started coughing. Her eyes were closed, her skin an icy blue, but she was alive.
She gasped, choking on salt water, and I rolled her head from Andy’s lap to mine, turning her onto her side.
“Maggie, sweetie, it’s Mom. Y
ou’re okay, baby.”
She hacked and coughed, but I wasn’t sure she was conscious. She was a deadweight on my lap and an incoming wave washed over her face.
“Let’s get her out of the water,” I said.
“Is she breathing okay?” Marcus asked as we carried her a few feet higher on the beach, turning her onto her stomach.
Andy knelt next to her face. “Maggie!” he shouted. “Are you okay, Maggie?”
I saw blood on Andy’s legs. “Andy, you’re bleeding! Where are you hurt?”
Andy looked down at his legs. The blood appeared to be pouring from his knee.
“It’s Maggie!” Marcus rolled her onto her back, and I saw what I had missed when we’d been sitting in the water: a deep cut on her neck, gushing blood onto the sand. Marcus lifted his T-shirt over his head and pressed it to the wound.
Maggie coughed, and we started to roll her over again, but she seemed to get her breathing under control.
“Maggie, sweetie, can you hear me?”
She mouthed something I couldn’t understand.
“What, honey?” I leaned closer.
“Did you swim all the way from out there?” Marcus asked Andy incredulously.
“We didn’t have to swim,” Andy said. “A big wave came and lifted us way up.” He reached his arms toward the sky.
Maggie whispered something again, her mouth moving soundlessly.
I leaned my ear against her lips, “What, Maggie?” I asked.
She mouthed the words silently, then cleared her throat. “It was Daddy,” she said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Maggie
SOMEONE HELD MY HAND. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT be Daddy. My lungs burned when I breathed in. Everything hurt, especially my neck, and I wanted to reach up and touch the place that ached, but my arms were too heavy, and anyway, I didn’t really care. My head seemed disconnected from the pain somehow. If heaven existed, did it feel like this? Floating above the pain, holding Daddy’s hand? I thought it probably did.
“She’s smiling,” a man’s voice said.
Uncle Marcus? I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids were as heavy as my arms.
“Maggie?” Mom. It was Mom’s hand holding mine.
I remembered the wave. I remembered losing Andy.
“Andy?” My eyelids flew open and I tried to sit up.
“Whoa.” Uncle Marcus put his hands on my shoulders and lowered me down again.
“Not so fast, sweetie,” Mom said.
I was in a strange white room. Mom was on my right, still holding my hand; Uncle Marcus was on my left, running his hand over my hair.
“I lost Andy,” I said. My voice was raspy, not like my voice at all.
“Andy’s fine,” Mom said.
“I’m sorry!” I started to cry. “I lost him in the wave!”
“He’s fine, Mags,” Uncle Marcus said. “Don’t cry. He’ll come see you later.”
My neck hurt. The pain cut through the floaty feeling in my head. I felt sick to my stomach and swallowed once. Twice. I was definitely not in heaven.
“You’re in Cape Fear Hospital,” Mom said. “You have a cut on your neck. It probably hurts a lot.”
I nodded, my eyes shut. Andy was safe? Would they lie to me about something like that?
“Does it hurt to breathe?” Mom asked.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You’re going to be fine,” she said. “You and Andy were incredibly lucky.”
“Is Ben here?” I opened my eyes again, squinting from the bright light in the room. I didn’t care who knew about Ben now. I wanted him with me.
“No, Mags,” Uncle Marcus said. “Just your mom and me.”
“You said something about Daddy saving you,” Mom said. “Helping you. What did you mean, sweetie?”
I closed my eyes again. I remembered the sense of calm I’d felt as the wave lifted me high in the air, but I was awake enough to know how crazy that would sound to Mom. How crazy it sounded even to me. I’d keep it to myself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
Mom hesitated, and I thought she wasn’t going to give up. “Okay,” she said finally.
I suddenly remembered the whole reason I was there. “The hearing!” I said, trying to sit up again. “Is it—”
“Postponed.” Mom held me down. “Don’t think about that now.”
I remembered Andy in The Sea Tender, telling me he’d gone outside to check for bugs during the lock-in.
“I need to talk to someone,” I said.
“What you need is rest.” Uncle Marcus rubbed my shoulder.
“No. No. I need to talk to Andy’s lawyer. No! To the police. Right now.”
“You have a lot of pain medication in you,” Mom said. “It’s not the time.”
“Yes, it’s time!” I insisted. “Yesterday was the time. Last week was the time. Last month was the time.”
“Mags, what are you talking about?” Uncle Marcus asked.
I couldn’t tell them. They might stop me from doing what I needed to do. What I should have done weeks ago.
“I’m awake,” I said. “I’m not out of it, and I need to talk to the police now.” I looked from my mother’s face to Uncle Marcus’s and saw their confusion. “Now,” I said again. “You’ve got to let me. Before I chicken out. I need to tell them what really happened.”
“What do you mean, ‘what really happened’?” Mom asked. She looked a thousand years old. “Did Andy tell you something?”
She was scared. Was she afraid I’d reveal something that would send Andy to prison for certain? I wondered if the same fear would be there if she knew that I was the one who was going to be locked up for good.
“You really should have a lawyer here,” Uncle Marcus said for at least the tenth time, when Flip Cates finished reading me the Miranda Warning. I knew he’d asked Flip to come instead of that weird Sergeant Wood and I was glad. But no way was I waiting for a lawyer. I’d already waited an hour for Flip.
I shook my head—a mistake. The doctor had told me not to move my head or I might open the cut on my neck again. I touched the bandage lightly with my fingers. The cut burned and my whole body ached, but I refused to take any more pain medication until after I talked to Flip. I didn’t want anyone to say that I wasn’t in my right mind when I spoke to the police.
Mom stood up from her chair to check my bandage. “It’s not bleeding,” she said. “I wish you’d reconsider, Maggie. Maybe Mr. Shartell could just talk to you on the phone before you say anything.”
“I can wait, Maggie,” Flip said. He was sitting where Uncle Marcus had been earlier, and he’d put a tape recorder on the rolling table. Uncle Marcus stood at the end of my bed.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” I said again. Mom and Uncle Marcus had been badgering me about a lawyer ever since I said I wanted to talk to the police. “He’ll spin things around until I don’t understand what I’m saying myself. I want to tell what really happened the night of the fire.”
My mother twisted her old wedding ring on her finger. “You can’t cover for Andy, sweetie,” she said.
I was surprised. “I’m not,” I said. “He didn’t know it, but he’s been covering for me all this time.” I looked at Flip. “Can we get started now?”
“Sure, Maggie,” Flip said. “Do you want me to question you or would you rather just talk?”
“I’ll just talk,” I said.
“Okay, then.” He did something with the tape recorder, moved it a little closer to me on the table. “Go ahead,” he said.
I took a deep breath and began.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Maggie
WHEN YOU REALLY LOVE SOMEONE, WHEN their joy feels like your joy and their hurt like your hurt, it’s both a wonderful and a terrible thing. That’s how it was with Ben and me. I was like a living, breathing clump of empathy around him. I thought he was so amazing, inside and out. Always patient with the kids on the swim team. Always encouraging my
baby brother. Believing in Andy the way I did. I loved Ben for that, and for his tenderness with me, and for the way he adored his daughter. For the way he kept trying to do well in the fire department when it was so hard and scary for him.
“When I was a little kid,” he told me one night when we were in bed at The Sea Tender, “my father would punish me by locking me in a cupboard under our stairs. I felt like I was suffocating. I’d panic. I’d pound on the cupboard door, but no one would come.”
I rubbed his arm as he spoke. I couldn’t imagine a parent being that cruel.
“I didn’t have any more problems with claustrophobia, though, until the first time I had to put on SCBA gear during my fire training,” he said. “It was like I was five years old again and trapped in the cupboard. That’s the way it is every time I put on the face piece. I can’t seem to get past it. I’ve mastered everything else. Your uncle says to give it time, but I think it’s getting worse instead of better.”
I was amazed he’d tell me something so personal. He trusted me with a secret. It made me feel like I could trust him back. With anything.
A couple of weeks later, I was in Jabeen’s with Amber and some other girls, back when I could still stand hanging around with them. We sat in a booth, and the next booth over had some of the volunteers from the fire department. Two men and a woman.
I looked up from my latte to see Ben walk in the door. He nodded to me and I nodded back. We were good at acting cool around each other, like we were the coaches of the swim team and nothing more.
“Hey,” Ben said to the volunteers as he walked up to the counter where Sara was working.
“Hey,” the volunteers said back to him.
He ordered a coffee to go. Amber was blathering on about Travis, but it was like a white noise in my ears because I was so focused on Ben, while trying not to act like I was focused on him.
As soon as Ben left Jabeen’s, the volunteers burst out laughing. It took me a second to realize they were laughing at Ben. One of the guys cackled like a chicken.